Introducing Harder Styles Music

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Introduction

Defqon 1 Festival 2019, endshow

Defqon 1 Festival 2019, endshow

Chordogram

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Computational Musicology Portfolio

Welcome to my portfolio for Computational Musicology.

This specific kind of EDM is by most people described as 'loud-', 'predominant music' or 'just noize'. One could say that due to it's rather intense nature it's not the most popular genre. Although there are a number of large festivals dedicated with this music style, among them Defqon.1, Dominator and Thunderdome.

Usually harder styles music is referred to 'hardstyle', 'hardcore' or 'gabber' but the terms are used haphazerdly, to the annoyance of many true fans in the community. This style of music offers a few subgenres that are distinguishable based on the tempo, melody and energy of the song. But these styles evolve and influence eachother over time. Thus it could be difficult to determine how a style truly is defined. But for at this moment, different subgenres for example are hardstyle, frenchcore, jump. Spotify doesn't distinguish between the styles yet (all harder styles are found under EDM) and admittedly sometimes the line between the subgenres is a bit arbitrary. But by only hearing a song it's possible to recognize it's style and even artist. Also, Spotify is able to do that too! As the algorithm is able to recommend harder styles songs. One could argue there is an objective basis to be defined to order the harder styles tracks into subgenres. This course would be a great moment to find that out.

Some variables that would be interesting to look at are energy, tempo and valence. In my portfolio I am going to try and establish a profile for some of the most recognized harder styles in the community. In two ways this will be done. I'll be comparing harder styles music with other Western music styles and with other subgenres. Using the hardstyle wiki I'll look at characteristics of these genres and see whether these hold up. There genres that are considered in this portfolio are; happy hardcore, euphoric hardstyle, raw hardstyle, mainstream hardcore, industrial hardcore and where things get really crazy; uptempo. The page colors correspond to the stages of defqon 1 where these respective genres are played (more or less).

The second page is harder styles compared to other music. On the third page are subgenres considered apart from one another and this is summarized on the last page.

Plot 2

Harder styles vs other music

Loudness


The loudness difference between harder styles music and top 1000 music is clearly visible.

Valance


Valence rating is determined by the 'positiveness' of a tune, a higher valence means more positive song. It appears that harder styles music in general contains less happy emotions.

Tempo


A great difference in tempo is not clearly seen. Harder styles music seems to be consistent around the 100 BPM and 160 BPM mark. Although harder styles music seems to in general have a slight edge above top 1000 music. More clearly indicated differences can be found between subgenres.

Energy


The energy rating plot shows a clear characteristic of harder styles music. It seems that harder styles music in general contains a lot of energy, according to the unbiased spotify API, which in particular should not come as a suprise really.

Pink

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Happy Hardcore

Happy Harcore

Happy Harcore

Chordogram

It is clearly visible that in happy hardcore, the major chords dominate. Happy hardcore is often associated with containing happy and uplifting tunes.

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Plot 2

Characteristics

Dune, Mental Theo, Party Animals, Flamman & Abraxas tempo: 165-180 BPM melodious high valence high acousticness

'HHC is definitely that bouncy, bubbly, piano-y, breakbeat-y, hip hop sampling, uber-cheesy, massively fun, whistle blowing, semi-spastic, candy raver shit.' - Random stranger from reddit

'Happy Hardcore is major chord, piano-led, sample powered 90's rave.' - Another random stranger from reddit

Plot 3

(Ultra)Violet

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Euphoric Hardstyle

Plot 1

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Plot 2

Characteristics

Plot 3

Blue

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Raw hardstyle

Plot 1

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Plot 2

Characteristics

Plot 3

Black

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Mainstream Hardcore

Plot 1

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Plot 2

Characteristics

Plot 3

Silver

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Industrial hardcore

Plot 1

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Plot 2

Characteristics

Plot 3

Yellow

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Uptempo

Plot 1

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Plot 2

Characteristics

Plot 3

Concluding remarks

Thank you for reading